German Published Patent Application No. 198 04 463 discusses a fuel-injection system for a mixture-compressing internal combustion engine having external ignition, which includes a fuel injector that injects fuel into a combustion chamber having a piston/cylinder arrangement and a spark plug projecting into the combustion chamber. The fuel injector may be provided with at least one row of injection orifices distributed across the circumference of the fuel injector. By selectively injecting fuel via the injection orifices, a jet-directed combustion method may be realized by a mixture cloud being formed using at least one jet.
The fuel injector of the aforementioned printed publication may form deposits in the spray-discharge orifices that may clog the orifices and cause an unacceptable reduction in the flow rate through the injector. This may lead to malfunctions of the internal combustion engine.